Plant & Animal Genomes XII Conference

January 10-14, 2004
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Workshop: Bioinformatics

With the publication of the 120 million bp sequence Arabidopsis genome in October 2000, a milestone in genome-based plant research was reached. This information has facilitated research in a multitude of agricultural and environmental studies. The next challenge in this post-genomic era is to assimilate the highly complex heterogeneous data collections in order to facilitate data mining and further analyses. This requires dynamic information acquisition, expert curation and the integration of bioinformatic methods. PlaNet (http://www.eu-plant-genome.net/) aims to overcome the limitations of individual efforts as well as the limitations of heterogeneous, independent data collections and create a nucleus for other European and International groups and consortia to join and utilise the network. PlaNet will develop a federated plant genome database that will provide annotation on sequence and related information such as functions, structures and regulatory properties, but will also create and incorporate information on pathways, transport systems, genetics and phenotypic analysis. This data will be integrated into a comprehensive platform and associate expert knowledge, providing a tool for the systematic exploration of Arabidopsis and other plants. These aims will be achieved using BioMOBY (http://www.biomoby.org), a database interoperability protocol that allows queries across multiple databases, developed by Mark Wilkinson at the National Research Council in Canada. PlaNet will be an invaluable resource for researchers, working on all aspects of plant biology, who will benefit from a central access point allowing queries and views of all PlaNet data.